


Perception

by Legendaerie



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M, Implied Relationship, Mild Spoilers, Non-explicit Eye Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 02:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5146865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Mini-fic prompt, originally on tumblr)</p><p>Carolina finally gets a look at the damage done to York's eye after his match against Texas. She doesn't like what she sees.  Or more accurately, what York <i>can't</i> see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perception

**Author's Note:**

> I like keeping copies of anything bigger than 1k words on my AO3. Originally posted on my tumblr, spawned from a mini-fic prompt of "things you never said at all"
> 
> and MAN did i pull my punches for this one. hoooooooo.

She’s almost too thrown by the arrival of Agent Texas to follow up on her earlier suspicions; almost too wrapped up in her own dread and anger and paranoia to whisk York to the side once they’re safe aboard the Mother with the sarcophagus. It takes her a couple hours to compartmentalize her own emotions, and to go through all the suffering of debriefing and medical exams for using her speed unit and everything else, but then Carolina hunts her faithful second down.

He’s still in his armor in the locker rooms, apparently the last to leave, fiddling with one of the pictures taped to the inside of his locker door. When she enters, his head turns a little further her way than she expected, and the dread from earlier returns with a brand new name.  
  
“Take off your helmet,” she commands in a low voice, one as sure as gravity and just as steady. York turns entirely to face her, grin evident in his tone and in the tilt of his head.  
  
“Oh? Missed my pretty face that much, did you?”  
  
She might have missed it a little while he was in and out of consciousness for days with half his face bandaged up, but York doesn’t need to know that. There’s hardly enough room on the ship for his buoyant ego some days as it is. Carolina ignores the bait. “I want to see your eye.”  
  
His posture goes from weary but flirtatious to wary but flirtatious; it adds another level to her dread and further justification to her concerns, and she puts an edge to her voice as she pulls off her own helmet.  
  
“Take it off, York.”  
  
He laughs, sounding much more queasy than pleased, as he sits down on the bench and braces his palms on each side of his helmet. “I always wanted to hear you say that, just not in that tone of voice.”  
  
Carolina’s heart sinks into her stomach as York takes off his helmet - half his face is still covered in gauze and tape, and the other half is covered in guilt. She steps briskly into his personal space, fingertips grazing the edge of his jaw before she rips off a strip of tape. York sucks in a small breath through his nose, but otherwise stays still as she does it again and again, stripping off the old damp gauze and revealing a jagged pair of deep gashes, dusty-red at the edges as they heal and scar. But it was his eye that drew the most of her focus, milky-white and with a matching red line in the corner.   
  
Carolina waved her hand on what should have been the edge of his vision, but his dark blue gaze didn’t even flicker away from her face. And suddenly she recalls every close call from today’s mission, the cover fire and the free fall and the high speed chase, and realizes just how many times York could have died.   
  
“You’re blind,” she says, more to herself than anything else. York looks away.  
  
“Just in the one eye. The other–”  
  
“You told me your eye was fine,” she snaps, the cold composure of the team leader bleeding away with every pound of her heart. Better lucky than good, maybe, but he had lied to her; and the fear and the anger cut her nearly to the bone.  
  
“I never said that.” He swallows, heartbeat faltering under her lingering touch. “I said I was _okay_ , and I am. Look,” and his own steady voice starts to crack as he holds up his newly replaced helmet, “I’ve been making some changes to the HUD so I can kinda see depth, and I’ve almost got it to set automatic motion trackers on my bad side. It’s not going to slow us down, I promise–”  
  
“This isn’t about the mission!” Her temper finally snaps, the scale tipping in the favor of rage, and she hauls York up by his chest piece and slams him into the locker. His mismatched gaze jumps to her face, flickering between her two eyes, and her gloved hands around his armor nearly tremble. “This is about you not getting yourself  _killed_ out there. You saw what happened to Maine. We would have been lucky to recover his  _corpse_.”  
  
They almost did, really. Had it not been for North, Maine would have bled out by the time someone reached him; and until then everyone including Carolina had more or less considered Maine a force of nature. While taking several bullets to the neck and still remaining conscious had added to his prestige, it had still been terrifying to see him fall.  
  
But just imagining York like that, crimson dripping down gold, feels even worse.   
  
“You’re my teammate,” she pleads, anger ebbing away and leaving her warm with concern, “and friend, and–”   
  
A flurry of images hits her, of their youth and the youth of the Project, of sparring matching and missions and conversations she didn’t have with anyone else, of stolen kisses in the hallway and bruises all over his collarbones. Her voice falters; the silence at the end of her sentence weighs heavy with meaning. York inhales.  
  
“–and I don’t want you to die out there. Not because of this." She runs her thumb along the edge of the longer gash on his cheek, more for emphasis than the actual ability to feel it through her gloves.  
  
York’s eyes close in a long blink, and he exhales deeply. "What other choice do I have?” he asks, his voice soft and low and horribly, terrifyingly defeated.  
  
Her eyes snap back to York’s face, which is more somber than she’s seen it in years. His hand reaches up to take hers with only a trace of blind hesitation.  
  
“It’s not like the Project offers much in the way of retirement benefits these days,” he says in a joking tone, but there’s no real humor in her voice. She knows he’s thinking of comrades past who got little more than a moment of silence, a sympathetic message home, and ten seconds in the ships incinerator. “And I don’t want to lose you, either.”  
  
Carolina’s snap is a reflex, a defensive action; she’s seen love’s destruction up close, seen what losing her mother did to her father and is starting to fear that might have been merely the tip of the iceberg. “I never said–”  
  
“I know,” York says, pulling her forward and leaning in. For a moment she thinks he might kiss her, but before she can decide to slap him for it or not he just closes his eyes and rests his forehead against hers. “But just…”  
  
She concentrates on that point of contact like a beacon in the night, savors the warmth of his skin.  
  
“Trust me. Like you have for years. Like I trust you.”  
  
And she knows that there’s nothing else she can do, so she sighs and pushes gently back against him.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
The moment lasts only a few breaths longer, both parties savoring the intimacy and the peace. And then the moment York takes in a breath to speak, Carolina knows what’s coming next.  
  
“Besides, Wyoming has lived a considerably long time without a functioning sense of humor, so I’ll probably– ouch!”  
  
She headbutts him, none too gently, and is rewarded with the clang of the back of his head against the lockers. “See you tomorrow, Agent New York, for sparring. Gotta test your depth perception for hand to hand combat and officially clear you for duty.”  
  
He grins at her, the scars making his smile especially crooked in a way she’s horrified she might one day find charming. “Noted, Agent Carolina.”   
  
She waits for his naked laugh to peter out before she puts her helmet back on and walks away, relief already trickling away. Her suspicions were right about York, and she has to trust that he’ll be okay. But if she’s right about Texas…   
  
None of them will be okay.


End file.
